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Herald of Yesteryear: Oct. 7, 1943

CHICAGOAN DEALS WITH ENEMY

TO KILL CUROSITY

CHICAGO, Ill.—Elbridge Gerry Bates, charged with plotting to violate the trading-with-the-enemy act, today offered a Chicago federal court a unique defense. The whole plot, he says, was just a creation of his own mind.

Bates testified that he conceived the plot to satisfy his curiosity about a supposed mining engineer who claimed to have millions of dollars in gold bullion for sale.

Bates said his plan called for transporting some 30,000 ounces of the metal to New York, in three automobiles guarded by machine guns. From New York, the gold was to be taken to the Massachusetts coast where it was to be placed aboard a Nazi submarine.

But the “mining engineer”—Harry A. Schaetzel—turned out to be a Secret Service agent baiting the trap for Bates.

Now Bates says he didn’t intend to buy the gold, and there wasn’t any Nazi submarine anyway.

A German alien research chemist and a furniture dealer are on trial with Bates.

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